Dr Amir Englund, a post-doctoral researcher in psychopharmacology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, said: “The present study is a large study exploring the effects of cannabis use on future problems such as anxiety, depression and drug and alcohol addiction.

“They found that use of cannabis was related to increased risk of later addiction to alcohol, cannabis and other drugs. Cannabis was not related to anxiety or depression at follow-up.

“Of course a study such as this is unable to ascertain causality between cannabis use and later drug addiction, merely that a relationship exists.”